Players can’t place all blame on team reps

Glen Davis justifiably wants a deal, but he's also uninformed and there's no excuse for him not contacting his team rep. (AP)

Should the players’ union and the team representatives in attendance at Monday’s meeting have put the owners’ proposal up for a vote of all 440 or so members? Had they done so, and had a majority of those members voted to accept it, the league’s doors would have opened today.

And some players certainly would have voted “yes.” Samardo Samuels, set to enter his second season with the Cavaliers, told the Akron Beacon Journal on Tuesday about the push by Paul Pierce and others to dissolve the union and sue the league:

“It’s easy for Paul Pierce to say that. You’ve been in the league how long?” Samuels said. “You’ve got a decent amount of money saved up, but what about the guys just coming into the league who don’t have [anything] saved up?”

Houston’s Kevin Martin told SI.com’s Sam Amick last week that he’d take the deal on the table. The Lakers’ Steve Blake reportedly lobbied other players to accept it. And several others — Derrick Favors, Earl Watson, Jeff Green, DeMarcus Cousins and Jeremy Evans — have indicated that they’re either not paying attention, not talking to their agents and/or just want to play as soon as possible.

That’s their prerogative, of course. No one can force them into paying attention. But even Kevin Durant, a superstar who is well-informed and has attended meetings, told Yahoo! Sports’ Marc Spears over the weekend that he was still pretty unfamiliar with what, exactly, decertifying the union would entail:

“I talked to my agent [Aaron Goodwin] about it,” Durant said. “I heard it’s not a good idea to do that. But I got to look into it a little bit more.”

Glen Davis, set to enter free agency, takes the cake with this angry interview in the Boston Herald after Monday’s developments. Davis wants a deal, and he’s justifiably upset with the prideful chest-puffing from both sides. But he is also, by his own admission, uninformed:

“I don’t think I’ve been kept in the loop as far as what’s going on and how things are going on,” he said. “I want to be kept in the loop, but when I say that, they say, well, come to the meetings.

“It’s not just Paul [Pierce] making that decision. It’s also Derek (Fisher) and Billy Hunter. I talk to players, but my friends are guys like Paul and (Kevin Garnett) – guys who are in a different stage of their careers from me.

“I don’t talk to a lot of the guys who are more in my stage, like Carl Landry and DeJuan Blair.”

The first part of that quote – about coming to meetings — should take its place in the Lockout Quote Pantheon. “They say, well, come to meetings.” And? Did you go? Did you find out where and when the regional meetings were? Did you call your union representative (Pierce) to get that information? Heck, did you read guys like Ken Berger of CBS Sports, sharp minds who published just about every nuance of these talks along the way?

And why didn’t you contact Landry or Blair or any other young player trying to cement his place in the league? They aren’t hard to find.

The dysfunction goes the other way, too, as Amick points out today:

Many reps weren’t calling their teammates, weren’t taking the time to understand the nuances of the $2 billion they still had an opportunity to have. Even on Monday, the most significant day of negotiations since this lockout began, there were no representatives from Portland, Utah or Sacramento in attendance.

There is just no excuse for any union rep not to have at least tried to contact every one of his players multiple times leading to Monday’s meeting. Maybe you fail to reach one or two, but leave a half-dozen voice mails, texts and emails before you give up.

Still, I’d rather have those union reps deciding my fate than players who have willfully ignored the entire lockout. Let’s be clear: That is a minority of players. Most have paid at least some attention to what is happening, and anyone who thinks professional athletes don’t get this stuff hasn’t had a conversation with the guys who attend these meetings.

But I’d rather have the smaller group on hand Monday making a decision than give that minority a chance to influence a yes or no vote on a deal that will affect every player’s life for up to a decade — and set the baseline for the next set of talks. As Eric Freeman points out at Yahoo! Sports, this is exactly what unions are designed to do, and what union representatives are elected to do: make informed decisions on behalf of members who didn’t attend the meetings or go through the negotiating process.

You can take issue with lots of things the union did and didn’t do here — its obvious communication problems, its decision to hold off decertifying or disclaiming interest until mid-November, and lots of other stuff. But the “should they have voted?” question is, to me, a non-issue brought up by players who are willfully out of the loop and fans who want a deal at any cost.